Biopsy is a routine procedure used to obtain a sample of a biological tissue from a live organ for a laboratory examination. Often, when carrying out such a procedure, the operating surgeon is assisted by supporting systems. For example, a biopsy sample may be obtained from an internal organ of the body, which is not visible from outside the body and therefore is not directly visible to the surgeon. In such cases an imaging modality such as an ultrasound, MRI or X-ray system may be used to provide to the surgeon images of the region inside the body from which a biopsy sample is to be obtained. Such images, in some cases, may be used to identify sites that are suspected as being abnormal and are therefore candidates for obtaining biopsy samples therefrom. In some cases, such images, particularly if provided to the surgeon continuously in the form of a real-time video stream, may image to the surgeon an organ or a borderline thereof, and may further image the biopsy needle as it is advanced towards a desired biopsy site.
Tracking systems may also be used to provide to the surgeon substantially continuous stream of position data of treatment tools, thereby assisting in navigating a treatment tool to a desired site. Further, position data, provided by such a tracking system, of a portable imaging modality such as an ultrasound portable imaging probe, may be employed to assign image position data to image data obtained by the imaging modality, for example by assigning substantially each pixel in each image a position along a pre-determined coordinate system.
International Patent Application publication number WO/2011/161684 filed Jun. 23, 2011 (designated hereinafter '684), and International Patent Application number PCT/IL2013/050065 filed Jan. 24, 2013 (designated hereinafter '065), both incorporated herein by reference, describe various embodiments of integrated systems incorporating data from a tracking system and from an imaging modality, to facilitate a treatment procedure. Specifically, in some embodiments, such systems may facilitate obtaining a biopsy sample from a desired site in an internal organ, not directly visible from outside the body. According to some embodiments, a series of two dimensional (2D) images of an organ, e.g. a male's prostate, is obtained, and each image is assigned with image position data as described above. A set of substantially parallel images, obtained at sufficiently small spatial intervals between each other, may be suitably arranged and combined to obtain a three-dimensional (3D) image of the imaged organ. Further, by identifying the borderline of the imaged organ, e.g. by methods of computerized image recognition or by human inspection of the images and virtually marking the borderline of the imaged organ, a virtual 3D model of the organ may be generated and stored in a computer's memory.
By continuously tracking the position of a treatment tool, and further by identifying the time of a specific treatment event, a location of a treatment site to which the treatment even is applied, may be recorded in terms of a pre-determined 3D coordinate system, e.g. a pre-determined coordinate system associated with a tracking system. For example, by continuously tracking the position of a biopsy needle, using a tracking system as described above, the position of the needle may be continuously registered relative to the position of a target organ from which a biopsy is to be obtained. By registering the moment of obtaining a biopsy sample, the exact location from which the biopsy sample is obtained may be recorded in terms of the 3D coordinate system. In some embodiments, locations from which biopsy samples were obtained may be thus marked on a virtual 3D model of the organ, and may be used later for navigating a treatment tool to the same sites.